Amos and Obadiah

 I have mentioned before that I listen to several podcasts each week about the Come Follow Me curriculum.  I often listen to Talking Scripture first by Mike Day and Bryce Dunford because Bryce has such interesting historical and linguistic insights and comments.  Then I listen to Lynne Wilson and John Cho in Book of Mormon Central, and then Come Follow Me Insights with Taylor and Tyler.  I usually listen to Follow Him with Hank Smith and John Bytheway next because they have really good guest speakers.  I leave Unshaken Jared Halverson to the end because I don't feel as bad if I don't happen to get to it. His podcasts are really long, and he tends to say the same things over and over.  They are good things, but he is a bit repetitive. 

So it was a bit surprising this week that I got my best insights about Amos and Obadiah "Unshaken".  Overall, I felt like Amos and Obadiah were a bit of a slog. We have had several weeks in a row that were prophets predicting Israel's demise and this is more of the same.  The one interesting thing that Jared Halverson pointed out was from Amos 3. The Lord is stating all these contradictions, "Will a Lion roar in a forest when he hath no prey ?" (v.4)  "Can a bird fall in a snare upon the earth, where no gin is for him?" (v. 5)  "Shall a trumpet be blown in a city and the people be not afraid?" (v. 6)  The answer to all these is, of course, "no".  Then there is the famous scripture "Surely the Lord God with do nothing but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets." (v.7) In other words, as surely as a lion roars when he catches a prey, or a bird gets away if there is not trap, or people fear when a warning trumpet is blown, the Lord will warn his people of impending doom before it befalls them.  In the verses that follow the prophet  gives the warning that the people have to repent or they will be destroyed. 

Then comes this obscure verse, "As the shepherd taketh out of the mouth of a lion two legs, or a piece of an ear; so shall the children of Israel be taken out that dwell in Samaria in the corner of a bed, and in Damascus in a couch." (v. 12).  Jared Halverson pointed out that this refers to a part in the Law of Moses (Exodus 22:13) that if a shepherd loses a sheep, he will be charged for the cost of the sheep unless he can prove it was taken by a predator.  If he comes back with the bits the predator left behind, he is absolved from paying for the sheep. What the Lord is saying in verse 12, is that the destruction of Israel will be so complete, it will be like when a Lion eats a lamb and only leaves bits of it behind.  In this case, the "bits" are the corner of a bed in Samaria, and a couch in Damascus.  But the image goes further than that.  In Amos 1:2, Amos says, "The Lord will roar from Zion,"  then in Chapter 3 he refers to lions a couple of times.  In other words, the Lord is the lion.  He will destroy Israel, and will leave the ruined bed and empty couch as proof that they brought the destruction on themselves by not heading his warnings.  Just as the shepherd who brings back the sheep bits is guiltless, the Lord is guiltless because he gave ample warning. 

I realize this isn't the most life-changing insight, but it is nice to take a really odd verse and figure out the reference.  Thanks, Brother Halverson.

Hosea: or Marriage as a symbol part 2

 This week we are looking at the books of Hosea and Joel. It was my turn to teach the Sunday School lesson to a class of 9-year-olds, and I was a little nervous about how to present Hosea to that age group.  In Hosea 1, the Lord tells Hosea to marry a harlot and father children with her.  When children come, they are named "Jezreel" after a valley that was once fertile, but had ruined by repeated warfare, "Lo Ruhamah" which means "no mercy," and "Lo Ammi" which means "Not my people."  Then his wife returns to her life of whoredom.  This is a analogy for the way that Israel has betrayed their covenant with the Lord by worshiping other gods. In Chapter 2, the Lord pleads with his errant wife, Israel, to return and he promises to once again make her his betrothed. 

I will betroth you to me forever;
    I will betroth you in righteousness and justice,
    in love and compassion. (v 19)

In the Law of Moses a man could not only divorce his wife if she were caught in adultery, but he could have her and her lover put to death (Deuteronomy 22:22). The fact that the Lord not only does not want to destroy unfaithful Israel, but instead to once again betroth himself to "her" is remarkable.  I asked my class why the Lord would want an unfaithful wife back.  One little girl said, quietly, "to give her a second chance."  I pressed harder, and asked, "But why would he do that?".  The same girl answered "because he loved her."  Of course, that is exactly right.  The whole image in Hosea is that, despite Israel's betrayal, God still loves Israel, and would take Israel back if they would only turn again to him.  

As I was thinking through this, my mind flashed to the incident in the New Testament, when the Pharisees brought a woman who was caught in adultery to Jesus. (John 8: 4-7)  All of a sudden that story took on a totally new dimension of meaning.  We have to remember that the New Testament was written by Jews for Jews. There was 40+ years after Jesus died before the gospels were written down.  During that time the disciples had time to sift through their experiences with Jesus and record the ones of most significance to them.  When Jesus told the Pharisees, "He who is without sin among you, let him throw a stone at her first," they all "went out, one by one, beginning at the oldest even to the last." I had always thought that the elders had been condemned by a sense of guilt for their personal sins, but maybe the incident brought back into their minds the books of Jeremiah, and Hosea, and all the other places in the Old Testament, when Israel was compared to an adulterous woman.  I think the New Testament writers included this story to show Jews that Jesus, like Jehovah in the Old Testament, was willing to forgive Israel and was, instead, inviting them to come to him and "sin no more." (John 8:11)

Of course, neither the House of Israel in Hosea's time nor most of the Jews in Jesus' time accepted his invitation to "betroth" themselves to him again. We must remember, however, that the head of the Northern tribes of Israel was Ephraim.  Today, most people who are baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day-Saints who receive their patriarchal blessing are adopted into the tribe of Ephraim.  In a way, we are at last accepting his invitation to return unto him and enter into an new covenant of love. 

Daniel

 As I read the first two chapters of the book of Daniel in English this week, I said to myself that these stories sound like folktales.  The idealized and formal conversations, the drama of the miraculous deliverances of Hananiah, Michael, and Azariah from the furnace and Daniel from the lion's den, the way that the foreign kings all come to eventually acknowledge the supremacy of the God of Israel, all suggest a polished narrative with a specific moralistic agenda. Some scholars believe that the Book of Daniel was written by Daniel at the end of his life, when he was about 90.  That could account for the folk-tale like flavor of the stories--an old man recounting the exploits of his youth.  Other scholars believe that it was written many years later, in the 3rd or 2nd century BCE during the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes. Antiochus Epiphanes persecuted the Jews in the Holy Land, and some scholars believe that the book of Daniel was written to give the people under persecution hope that God was still with them and could do miraculous things for them.  

Whether the stories were written by Daniel or by later people recounting folk tales of the Babylonian Captivity, the message of the book of Daniel ties in really well with the main message of the book of Jeremiah. Last week I wrote about Jeremiah's main message, i.e. that the God of Israel had followed his people as they were taken from Jerusalem, and continued to sustain them in captivity.  In a way, the stories of Daniel are well placed directly following Jeremiah, because they illustrate his point perfectly. Daniel and his friends are the ultimate example how to survive and thrive in captivity without giving up your belief in the God of Israel. 

These stories are some of the best known Bible stories that every Sunday School child learns.  Reading them in Hebrew brought only one of two small insights.  One is that they are not written all in Hebrew.  As I read Chapter 2 of Daniel, whenever the king spoke, his words were in Aramaic.  Later in the book part is written in Greek. This is one of the reasons scholars think they must have been written later, because the Greek Language didn't really exist in the 6th century BCE.  Another small idea I had never thought of before concerns Chapter 1.  Daniel and his friends were captured in Jerusalem and taken to be groomed to be wise men in the land of Babylon.  They were entrusted into the head of the eunuchs. I always assumed that was because they were very young when they were captured, even pre-adolescent and thus belonged with "the women".  One of the podcasters this week suggested another reason.  Maybe when they entered into the king's service they were neutered and became eunuchs.  A argument in favor of this assumption is that none of them are ever mentioned to have taken a wife. I don't know why that fact should be particularly important but, to me, it made their service in the court of the King seem like an even greater sacrifice.